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Was I Lost or Not? 
i 
By 
4 
ORE than a generation ago a little inci¬ 
dent happened to me which, while really 
of no importance, gave me at the time 
some sinking of the heart and uneasiness. I have 
often speculated about it, but have never spoken 
of it to anyone, yet now I feel like making con¬ 
fession and asking a question. The time was 
during the Indian wars which followed hard 
upon the occupancy by the whites of the Black 
Hills of Dakota, and not long before the fam¬ 
ous battle in which General Custer and some 
hundreds of the men of the Seventh Cavalry 
lost their lives on the Little Big Horn River in 
what is now the State of Montana. 
Then this country had a frontier, of which 
even to-day we often hear, although it long ago 
ceased to exist. At that time its boundaries 
were the Missouri River on the east, the one 
existing transcontinental railroad on the south, 
and on the west the Mormon settlements and 
the mining camps beyond the Rocky Mountains 
or in them. Within these boundaries there were 
no settlements save an occasional military post 
and no white men save a few traders and trap¬ 
pers. There were Indians not a few, but most 
of the living things that dwelt in this wilderness 
were buffalo, antelope, deer, elk and other wild 
game. 
It was across this wilderness that I was travel¬ 
ing with a small command of soldiers. The 
party had been sent out for purposes of ex¬ 
ploration, the locating of certain points on rivers 
and in mountains, and incidentally there went 
with it a geologist and a naturalist. I filled the 
last named position. 
We were traveling across the country in a 
general westerly direction and the routine of 
the day’s march and work went on without in¬ 
terruption. We had not been troubled by In¬ 
dians; we had not reached the buffalo range. 
Each day the geologist, accompanied by a sol¬ 
dier, detailed nominally as his orderly, but whose 
office was actually to serve as lookout, started 
out and cracked rocks or measured the angle of 
dip and strike, returning with a haversack full 
of fossils or rock fragments. Daily I went out, 
also with an orderly, and made such collections 
as I could of birds, mammals and reptiles. 
As I have said, we had not reached the buf¬ 
falo range, and while game was extreme'y plenty 
in the region we were traversing, there was no 
one in the party who had the time or the in¬ 
clination to hunt, and for a good deal of the 
time our meat ration consisted of bacon. 
I was known to have done some hunting, and 
YO 
the commanding officer in some way got it into 
his head that if I would go out and hunt I could 
bring back game, but I was more interested in 
the collecting of specimens than in the work of 
hunting, and did not understand several hints 
that he gave me that I should devote a day to 
getting some fresh meat instead of spending it 
in shooting little birds and catching rattlesnakes. 
At last he asked me directly if I would not de¬ 
vote the next day to hunting and see if I could 
bring in some fresh meat, and I readily assented. 
The following morning, therefore, with my 
orderly, I branched off to the left of the direc¬ 
tion to be followed by the command, and hav¬ 
ing been told about how far they would march, 
the direction, and where they would camp, I 
gave myself up to the business of hunting. It 
was, I recall, a very beautiful morning in mid¬ 
summer, and for some miles McConnell, the 
orderly, and I rode with great pleasure over the 
rounded swells of the prairie with the sun di¬ 
rectly behind us. The grass had already turned 
yellow and from it our horses’ feet disturbed 
hundreds of birds which, however, seemed to 
pay little regard to our presence. The startled 
meadowlark flew a few yards and alighting on 
the tall stem of a yucca sounded his plaintive 
whistle. Maccown’s hunting and the chestnut- 
colored bunting sprang from the ground, flew 
eight or ten yards into the air and then sailed 
earthward on extended wing, singing as if their 
little throats would burst. Rarely a kildeer 
plover or a long-bifled curlew flew into the air 
uttering their shrill whistles, or from some dis¬ 
tant hill came the melancholy cry of the up¬ 
land plover. Half a dozen times I dismounted 
from my horse to push aside the curling stems 
of some tuft of buffalo grass and look down 
into the cup-shaped cavity beneath it, where lay 
the mottled eggs of shore lark or bunting. 
Occasionally we saw antelope in the distance, 
but the country was not a good one for hunting, 
since the hollows were wide and bare and the 
hills low and rounded. As soon, therefore, as 
our heads appeared over the kno’l the antelope, 
feeding or resting in the valleys, saw us and 
walked or trotted to the tops of the nearby 
hills, and when they had satisfied their curiosity 
loped off over the prairie. 
This went on pretty much all through the 
morning, and I began to recognize that if we 
were to hunt and make camp that night we must 
kill our meat before long. As yet we had seen 
no game save antelope. About noon, however, 
we came to a . dry water course with a deep 
valley and steeper sides, and in the bed of this 
water course grew some boxelder trees and 
occasionally a clump of willows. It looked as 
if here might be found a white-tailed deer or 
two, and we turned to follow it up, now having 
the sun, which had drawn well to the south¬ 
ward, again almost behind us. 
We had not ridden more than a mile along 
this stream when from a thick clump of willows 
just before us a white-tailed buck sprang out 
and ran swiftly toward the nearest hilltop, stop- 
•ping about half way up the slope to look back, 
and during that stop receiving the fatal ball 
which stretched him on the prairie. It took but 
a short time to-dress him and after cutting away 
all the superfluous parts we tied him behind 
McConnell’s saddle and went on. 
It was now somewhat after noon and I began 
to think that we would better start for camp. 
Still I was anxious, if possible, to get another 
animal and was keenly on the alert for antelope. 
By this time the sky had become overcast and 
the sun could no longer be seen. At the same 
time, while we were following up this valley, 
I had kept the points of the compass very satis¬ 
factorily in my mind and now started off in 
a northerly direction, which ought to bring me 
to the stream on which the command would 
camp, though it might not have gone quite so 
far as the point I would reach, and I intended 
to bear off a little to the east to strike camp 
or the trail near the camp. Soon after leav¬ 
ing the valley we came to a hill rather higher 
than its fellows and up this we rode with much 
caution. I motioned McConnell to keep back, 
and rode ahead, letting my horse go only a few 
steps at a time, and whenever he stopped, search¬ 
ing the country with the utmost care; Before I 
had reached the top of the hill I saw the back 
of an antelope only two or three hundred yards 
beyond, and turning about and riding a little 
way down the slope I dismounted, and leaving 
my horse with McConnell, crept up to the top 
of the hill. From here I could see eight or ten 
antelope, a long shot off, too far as I felt then, 
to justify a shot. I had learned how to hunt 
from Indians, who possess an everlasting stock 
of patience, to whom a charge of powder and 
lead is of much value and who would rather 
spend a day watching for game to move around 
into an advantageous situation than waste a shot. 
For nearly two hours I crouched there and 
watched these antelope feed about, but at length 
my reward came, for they began to walk di¬ 
rectly up toward me. The vig-'l was not tire¬ 
some, for it was extremely interesting to watch 
the animals as they wandered here and there, j 
nibbling at the grass or weeds or low brush, and 
perhaps for a time standing still, chewing the 
cud. The little kids chased each other about and 
sometimes seemed to fight with one another, 
rearing up on hind legs and striking with their 
